"I am going on holiday to Key West next week. The rooms are booked and I have nobody to go with". With an invitation like that, who am I to refuse? Quickly rearranging my schedules I found two things. First that I could incorporate a week in Key West easily into my schedule as it fell quite nicely between courses I am taking (the last course gained me 91% overall) and that it also slipped nicely into a quiet spot at work. The second thing was that my schedule on my phone was screwed up. Now that never used to happen when I used a Blackberry. Sadly with Android, it happens too often - I feel I spend more time fighting Android than anything else though it does afford me the opportunity to put this blog entry in.
I departed from Lexington in my SUV and parked in my friend's garage from where we took her car - largely because her car gets 30mpg while mine gets just 19mpg. With fuel prices like those in Key West which are a good 15% higher than I am used to paying, this was a smart move. Thus we drove down to Key West, switching drivers every 200 miles or so.
The first night we spent in Florida City - the last habitation before the Keys. There we spent the night in a really pleasant motel before finding out the next day that hotels in Key Largo would have been cheaper. Having said that, we found a wonderful Mongolian Barbecue restaurant where we picked the food raw and it was cooked in front of us.
The next day we headed down to Key West, passing through Key Largo. In Key Largo I remembered the 1938 film with Humphrey Bogart. Idly I thought of finding the hotel where it was filmed. Later I was glad we pressed onto our destination as research indicated that the extereor scenes of "Key Largo" were chopped from other films or filmed in various places on the Keys and of course in the ubiquitous Hollywood studio.
We meandered down through the Keys until finally arriving in Key West at our hotel. There we arrived in time to find the hotel room we had been looking forward to had been given to a guest that had rejected their original room. The room we should have had would have involved climbing lots of stairs and would have had no balcony. The room we had was small but full of character, had a balcony and was within easy reach of the pool and the outdoor breakfast area. Above the gazebo area rose palm trees laden with coconuts that from time to time fell with a great crash to the ground.
The days and evenings were spent having a wild time. One night was at a drag show. Another was spent watching the sun set over the sea. The Keys are so narrow that its possible to watch the sun rise over the ocean in the morning then walk half a mile to watch it set over the sea in the evening.
Architecturally the Keys are mostly wooden buildings though as passing hurricanes demolish an increasing number, the ratio of hurricane-proof concrete buildings is rising. In terms of transport, there were electric golf carts, bicycles and scooters to be hired. We simply walked as we are pretty relaxed. It is nice not to have to drive anywhere.
Key West is sunny enough for my friend to get burned by the sun and for me to have to locate aloe vera skin lotion for her. Its pretty quiet though Saturday night on Duval Street the quiet was frequently penetrated by police sirens. This was despite the presence of groups of police on most street corners. The only other thing to break the silence is the frequent noise of planes passing overhead on final approach to Key West airport. In fact its quite interesting to look up and see the different types of planes though the only seaplane that we saw on this trip flew over on the way through Key Largo.
The only way to get a true image of what the place was like is to watch the video as I pan slowly from one side of the patio to the other. This was taken on day two when our room was still quiet. On day 3 somebody moved into the next room with a pair of Pit Bulls. Yes - an elderly-looking couple brought along a pair of pit-bull terrors that barked incessantly. Fortunately the hotel said they had a robust anti-nuisance policy that required the couple to find alternate accommodation for their dogs. Sadly, this was the end of our stay at the hotel. It wasn't that we couldn't cope with the dogs but by the end we were plagued by illness. Mine from eating a pizza that had apparently been left out too long that meant I missed the wine and cheese cruise that my friend and I had paid for. She went on the wine and cheese cruise and came down with what was apparently a sinus infection. Thus after 3 days in Key West, we called it a day and drove home, pausing at an hotel mid-way. Still, we had a 5 day break even though two of those days were almost continual driving.
Speaking of driving, the pictures that I missed taking were of a 4-wheel trailer which was being towed along with just three tires on the wheels. The 4th rim was just skipping merrily along the surface of the road. Then there was the southernmost point of the US which was so crowded we just drove past and carried on going. Another was a photograph of the free range chickens that roamed the islands. I would also have liked to have included photos of the local wildlife but as I had opted just to carry one lens and that was a wide-angle zoom, it just wasn't possible.
I wonder very much about cameras - whether a really good digital zoom compact isn't just as good as an SLR for many things. The zoom compact I have is many years old and my SLR beats it easily but I'm not convinced that modern zoom compacts are that far away from digital SLRs. When it comes to putting photos online then pretty much any camera is good enough as nobody needs images greater than 1024 pixels square for webpages and blogs etc. This is why rather than using solely digital SLR images on this trip, I have also included images taken with a cellphone camera. Such cameras are derided by many but really, I think the pictures are quite good representations of what I saw.
The following are general scenes from around Key West.
I departed from Lexington in my SUV and parked in my friend's garage from where we took her car - largely because her car gets 30mpg while mine gets just 19mpg. With fuel prices like those in Key West which are a good 15% higher than I am used to paying, this was a smart move. Thus we drove down to Key West, switching drivers every 200 miles or so.
The first night we spent in Florida City - the last habitation before the Keys. There we spent the night in a really pleasant motel before finding out the next day that hotels in Key Largo would have been cheaper. Having said that, we found a wonderful Mongolian Barbecue restaurant where we picked the food raw and it was cooked in front of us.
The next day we headed down to Key West, passing through Key Largo. In Key Largo I remembered the 1938 film with Humphrey Bogart. Idly I thought of finding the hotel where it was filmed. Later I was glad we pressed onto our destination as research indicated that the extereor scenes of "Key Largo" were chopped from other films or filmed in various places on the Keys and of course in the ubiquitous Hollywood studio.
We meandered down through the Keys until finally arriving in Key West at our hotel. There we arrived in time to find the hotel room we had been looking forward to had been given to a guest that had rejected their original room. The room we should have had would have involved climbing lots of stairs and would have had no balcony. The room we had was small but full of character, had a balcony and was within easy reach of the pool and the outdoor breakfast area. Above the gazebo area rose palm trees laden with coconuts that from time to time fell with a great crash to the ground.
The days and evenings were spent having a wild time. One night was at a drag show. Another was spent watching the sun set over the sea. The Keys are so narrow that its possible to watch the sun rise over the ocean in the morning then walk half a mile to watch it set over the sea in the evening.
Architecturally the Keys are mostly wooden buildings though as passing hurricanes demolish an increasing number, the ratio of hurricane-proof concrete buildings is rising. In terms of transport, there were electric golf carts, bicycles and scooters to be hired. We simply walked as we are pretty relaxed. It is nice not to have to drive anywhere.
Key West is sunny enough for my friend to get burned by the sun and for me to have to locate aloe vera skin lotion for her. Its pretty quiet though Saturday night on Duval Street the quiet was frequently penetrated by police sirens. This was despite the presence of groups of police on most street corners. The only other thing to break the silence is the frequent noise of planes passing overhead on final approach to Key West airport. In fact its quite interesting to look up and see the different types of planes though the only seaplane that we saw on this trip flew over on the way through Key Largo.
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| Palm trees at the hotel |
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| A coconut fell from the palm tree |
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| The hotel with our room in the lean-to. |
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| The hotel pool with my friend enjoying a quiet cigarette. |
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| One of the cats that roam through the hotel grounds. |
The above photos were all taken with my humble cellphone and no photo editing. Those that follow were taken with a digital SLR and post processed for color balance and exposure but not cropped.
All over Key West, chickens run wild. I don't know whether it's a local ordinance that they should but both cats and chickens seem to coexist happily while roaming wild across the key.
Really and truly, transport is not needed on Key West. There are plenty of bicycles and electric vehicles around as well as motor scooters of all varieties as well as places that hire them out. We walked a lot on Key West and by the end our calves were aching due to our normally sedentary lifestyles. I would have loved to have ridden one of the electric vehicles available for hire but didn't really want to fork out $80 a day for one when 90% of the time I would have been walking anyway.
The hotel we stayed in was absolutely gorgeous - it was the Chelsea Hotel and I can highly recommend it. Breakfast was served in the open air beside the swimming pool and was pretty much of a buffet affair from 8am until 10am. It was pretty standard fare - croissants (with ham inside, strangely), cup cakes, bagels, bread, cereal and fruit with orange juice, coffee and tea also available. I have no complaints about breakfast. We grabbed breakfast and ate on our patio. Didn't I mention the patio - outside of most rooms there is a patio with a small table and a couple of chairs. It was really quite civilized.
The only way to get a true image of what the place was like is to watch the video as I pan slowly from one side of the patio to the other. This was taken on day two when our room was still quiet. On day 3 somebody moved into the next room with a pair of Pit Bulls. Yes - an elderly-looking couple brought along a pair of pit-bull terrors that barked incessantly. Fortunately the hotel said they had a robust anti-nuisance policy that required the couple to find alternate accommodation for their dogs. Sadly, this was the end of our stay at the hotel. It wasn't that we couldn't cope with the dogs but by the end we were plagued by illness. Mine from eating a pizza that had apparently been left out too long that meant I missed the wine and cheese cruise that my friend and I had paid for. She went on the wine and cheese cruise and came down with what was apparently a sinus infection. Thus after 3 days in Key West, we called it a day and drove home, pausing at an hotel mid-way. Still, we had a 5 day break even though two of those days were almost continual driving.
Speaking of driving, the pictures that I missed taking were of a 4-wheel trailer which was being towed along with just three tires on the wheels. The 4th rim was just skipping merrily along the surface of the road. Then there was the southernmost point of the US which was so crowded we just drove past and carried on going. Another was a photograph of the free range chickens that roamed the islands. I would also have liked to have included photos of the local wildlife but as I had opted just to carry one lens and that was a wide-angle zoom, it just wasn't possible.
I wonder very much about cameras - whether a really good digital zoom compact isn't just as good as an SLR for many things. The zoom compact I have is many years old and my SLR beats it easily but I'm not convinced that modern zoom compacts are that far away from digital SLRs. When it comes to putting photos online then pretty much any camera is good enough as nobody needs images greater than 1024 pixels square for webpages and blogs etc. This is why rather than using solely digital SLR images on this trip, I have also included images taken with a cellphone camera. Such cameras are derided by many but really, I think the pictures are quite good representations of what I saw.
The following are general scenes from around Key West.
For the astronomically inclined the following is a photo of the night sky. As I didn't bring a tripod, I simply put the camera on a fencepost aimed straight up and gave it an aperture priority exposure with the focus manually set at infinity (the autofocus couldn't see well enough). I don't think it's too bad at all.
And so we went back to our respective homes in Lexington and Charleston until the next wonderful trip. We had planned to spend longer away but it seemed time what with my friend coming down with a sinus infection and being somewhat miserable with it, to curtail the trip and head home.
Before I finish though, I'll put up two photos of fuel prices. The lower price I paid in Cayce upon my return and the higher price was in Key West itself. Quite a difference. The moral is - fill up before you get onto the Keys.
As a final aside, the lens I used was a Tamron 17-35 that I had put in a drawer a few years ago having never had really great results from it. Back then I was dismally unhappy for other reasons. I pulled the lens out a few weeks ago and tried it on a trip to the beach. It performed spectacularly and it's not even stabilized!
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